A recently growing problem in retail store environments has been the introduction of credit-card skimming devices installed in point-of-sale terminals. These skimming devices can be installed illicitly by criminals to capture the credit card information of customers as they swipe their credit card to make a payment to the store. This credit card information can be transmitted directly to the criminal via, for instance a Short Message Service (SMS) message or a General Packet Radio Service, 3rd Generation, Long Term Evolution (GPRS/3G/LTE) data connection, or more typically stored on flash memory in the skimmer device itself, to be retrieved later via a short-range wireless connection such as Bluetooth®. Illegal skimmers using Bluetooth® have been particularly popular with criminals recently because of the low power requirements, and easy availability of chips and control software.
Presently, store administrators address this problem by walking around the store with a handheld communication device or cellphone, which is Bluetooth® capable, looking (i.e. sniffing) for signals from these illegal skimming devices. This process is time consuming, error prone, expensive, and leaves large periods of time where an unauthorized skimming device can stay active in the store. Moreover, Bluetooth “sniffing” and wireless intrusion protection systems (WIPS) are a new network role that is poorly defined at this time.
Accordingly, there is a need for a technique by which the above described illegal skimmers can be detected and flagged for a system administrator's attention.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.